Without its ancient food of strong passions, vast crimes, heroic excellences, poetry therefore is, if not actually starved to death, reduced to a very meagre diet.

There is still the poetry of description--description of rocks, and trees, and waters, and common household life; and our young Gy-ei weave much of this insipid kind of composition into their love verses." "Such poetry," said I, "might surely be made very charming; and we have critics amongst us who consider it a higher kind than that which depicts the crimes, or analyses the passions, of man.

At all events, poetry of the inspired kind you mention is a poetry that nowadays commands more readers than any other among the people I have left above ground." "Possibly; but then I suppose the writers take great pains with the language they employ, and devote themselves to the culture and polish of words and rhythms of an art ?" "Certainly they do: all great poets do that.

Though the gift of poetry may be inborn, the gift requires as much care to make it available as a block of metal does to be made into one of your engines." "And doubtless your poets have some incentive to bestow all those pains upon such verbal prettinesses ?" "Well, I presume their instinct of song would make them sing as the bird does; but to cultivate the song into verbal or artificial prettiness, probably does need an inducement from without, and our poets find it in the love of fame--perhaps, now and then, in the want of money." "Precisely so.

But in our society we attach fame to nothing which man, in that moment of his duration which is called 'life,' can perform.